I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
I spent a few hours yesterday and today painting en plein air for a plein air festival sponsored by a local women’s art group. It was hard to force myself to do it, because it was so outside of my comfort zone. I usually paint abstract landscapes or, more often, pure abstracts using acrylics in my studio.
I almost gave up yesterday. I had decided to use my Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels instead of acrylics, but I was stymied by my lack of watercolor skills. The work looked amateurish and not in a pleasingly outsider art kind of way.
Today I went back to my boyfriend M’s house to try again. He lives in the city where the festival was being held, and one requirement was that you do your work in that city. Yesterday I had wanted to go to a light rail station but that didn’t work, for one reason or another (parking lot closed at Downtown Littleton Station, homeless men at Mineral). Instead, I ended up at M’s house.
M has a lot of blank walls and asked me previously if he could hang one of my paintings up. I am going to paint three new paintings for him, a series based on things that are in his backyard — but abstracted and done in a minimalist format. I decided I would make a try at something along those lines for the plein air festival.
I focused in on things in his backyard: his motorcycle, two ladders stacked on top of each other in an interesting configuration, a wheelbarrow. Today I decided that zooming in on his motorcycle could produce a painting that was both representational and semi-abstract. I didn’t use true-to-life colors. I changed the black wheels to dark blue and the burgundy fixtures of the motorcycle to a brighter red. I used desaturated lavender for the chrome. I added a background of green for the grass and off white for what was actually a brown fence, because I wanted contrast.
I like how it turned out, and it will serve as a useful step along the way to producing the three M’s Backyard paintings that I have planned for M’s walls.
I’m glad I decided to do the plein air event. It stretched me as an artist. I was forced to use my drawing and observation skills, as limited as they are. I put myself under serious creative pressure.
I almost forgot that I actually wrote about this on Friday, that getting stuck can be just what someone needs to expand and grow.
In Beyond Anxiety, Martha Beck says that once you learn to harness this part of the “creativity spiral”—the part where you put yourself in a position to feel entirely stuck—you’ll begin to turn away from the anxiety-driven life:
Compared with this, an anxiety-driven life looks so boring. Once you’ve lived as a creative magician for a while, you may start to see going back to anxiety as a choice. More and more, you’ll feel able to simply refuse to enter the paralyzing, shrinking spiral of anxiety. You’ll know that instead, you can deliberately turn toward curiosity and spiral up and out to new experiences and horizons.
Yesterday afternoon I felt so uncomfortable. My plein air paintings hadn’t turned out. My wax crayons had melted. My artist friend said afterward, “watercolor is so technical… much more than acrylics,” which made me feel newly defeated. I painted from my photos of M’s backyard at home. But I didn’t come up with anything I liked.
“I suck as an artist,” I told myself. “I’m going to quit.”
Then, this morning, texting with M, I was thinking about his walls. I was thinking about how to produce paintings he’d be proud to hang up, paintings that would delight him when he looked at them. I know something of his taste. He likes Hans Hofmann’s Still Life, with its rich warm red and cobalt blue, and more desaturated colors of green and yellow. I was thinking of that and in the back of my mind I was thinking about the plein air festival. I was ready to give up.
Instead, at home, I tried painting a close up of the front wheel of M’s motorcycle, sitting in his backyard in the grass, against a fence. I used not-true-to-life colors. I liked what I did. I felt inspired to go back to his house and paint en plein air again. He brought me a bottle of water. He made me a BLT sandwich, even bought gluten-free bread for me.
It challenged me to take a painting from start to finish in one sitting. At points I wanted to quit and start again, except I did not want to start again. I kept going. I held it up in front of the motorcycle. I noted where I got things wrong (I got many things wrong). I noted where I got things right (I got many things right).
I showed it to M, proud, when I was finished. He didn’t seem impressed. He said, “I’m so glad you came over!” That’s ok. He didn’t need to appreciate or like the painting. I appreciated and liked the painting, and I appreciated his BLT in support of my art.
plans for the week
We’re coming up on the 4th of July. Languor has set in. Japanese beetles have landed. M said he’s available every night this week. So am I.
This week – dog walking at Humane Colorado. Breakfast with my mom and my daughter. Cancel Xfinity, now that I have fiber internet set up. Write a newsletter article about creative impasse, or maybe about falling in love. Start my three-month rotation as Facebook social media admin for WCACO. Fourth of July brunch at the senior living community with my dad and his GF.
Do I have an intention for the week? Be present. Give love. Find inspiration.